Every five years...

My passport has gathered a bit of dust over the past few months as I've changed jobs, made a valiant attempt at living in two states at once, and negotiated the turmoil of selling real estate in these interesting times. Life has certainly not been boring.

This is changing as I prepare to board an Amsterdam-bound plane for a trip that will ultimately take me to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a nation of about four million sandwiched both physically and culturally between Romania and Ukraine.

I realized that I've visited Chisinau and Moldova every five years -- 2002, 2007, and now 2012.

In many ways, Moldova and what I experienced there in 2002 had a sizable impact on my life. I went to Chisinau the first time expecting to visit a school training Moldovans for Moldova. I certainly found that in great measure. What truly surprised me was a large number of people from various Central Asian nations. This visit was influential in my dedication of a good bit of my graduate work at Indiana University to the study of Central Asia and the ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and contemporary Eurasia.

In the coming days, I’ll be meeting with quite a number of people with an interest in that part of the world. Some of them are new acquaintances. Some are old friends. I’ll mostly be listening and learning.

Travel is a good reminder of the complexity of our world. In Indianapolis, an Ethiopian or Eritrean lady checked me in for my Delta flights. The flight attendants on my KLM flight from Amsterdam to Bucharest included people of Dutch, African, and Asian ethnic backgrounds. Globalization is everywhere, yet I continue to wonder how deep it really goes.

Such globalization is not new or novel. I’ve recently finished Charles Mann’s 1493:  Uncovering the World Columbus Created. I picked up the audio book to fill the time driving between Indianapolis and Grand Rapids and honestly didn’t expect much. What I found was extremely thought provoking, as Hall explored the ways in which the “Columbian Exchange” launched a force of globalization that continues to this day. Such interactions went far beyond the carriage of maize, sweet potatoes and other crops from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia or the cataclysmic importation of European diseases to North America. They involved fundamental economic exchanges (such as the transport of Bolivian silver to Mexico, from whence it traveled via galleons to Spanish Manila and eventually China, in return from Chinese goods that reshaped the economies of Europe and the Americas). This trade, among other things, allowed sixteenth and seventeenth century Mexico City to become what Hall calls the world’s first cosmopolitan metropolis, with its teeming American, Asian, and African populations living in complex relationship one with another.

Mann is a journalist rather than an academic historian (although he draws on a broad reading of historical literature and presents an historically credible argument). His writing, however, accomplishes something that is all too rare – what I can only call sweeping vision. Having read and digested huge amounts of historical materials diverse in their geography and language, he presents a rare, global, and multidisciplinary view that begins to show the interconnectedness of things. Certainly, such a task would be impossible without finely researched and narrowly focused history on points as fine as the demographics of sixteenth century central Mexico or the economics of silver in late Ming China.

As I think about leadership development and education and as I travel about this mixed up, intertwined world we live in, I can’t help but wonder how it might be possible to form more people with such sweeping visions, with an ability to see interconnectedness across disciplines, across languages, across cultures. Certainly such work depends on abundant, narrow expertise and research – on those who delve deeply. But it’s my sense that we aren’t lacking in that area. How are those who can see the whole formed? How can such learning and research be encouraged? Such are the types of questions that animate my work, that leaven my conversations as I travel. I’m fortunate to know many people who fit the description of “connectors” with sweeping vision.  

Who knows what this third visit to Moldova will bring. More to come…